Mass Monkeypox Vaccination Sites Opened in New York

HI INDIA NEWS DESK
NEW YORK, NY — Three mass monkeypox vaccination sites opened in New York Sunday as part of the city’s newest effort to get doses to New Yorkers desperate to receive them.

The Bushwick Education campus, Aviation High School in Long Island City and Bronx High School of Science became single-day hubs where the city began distributing 14,500 JYNNEOS vaccines from the federal government.

“We will continue to work to meet the needs of New Yorkers at high risk of monkeypox transmission and severe disease,” said Health department commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan.
“We are approaching monkeypox in New York City with the urgency it deserves.”

The city will also open a monkeypox vaccine clinic in Staten Island — at the NYC Health + Hospitals/Gotham Health, Vanderbilt — similar to those already opened in Chelsea, Harlem and Corona, Queens.
The city announced Friday it would release about 8,000 first doses — the vaccine requires two — to those with appointments and 4000 more to high-risk patients with referrals over the next two weeks, according to a press release.

NBC New York puts the number at 9,000 first doses and notes all appointments were booked within 10 minutes of the new site’s launch.

The number of cases in New York City has risen steadily in past weeks from 14 on June 15 to 461 as of Friday, according to the Health department.

New York City cases make up about 25 percent of the 1,814 reported in the U.S., according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data updated Friday.

Rollout of the monkeypox vaccine has been hampered by low supply and a glitchy website that crashed last week less than an hour after new appointment bookings went live.

After the faulty rollout Tuesday, the city announced its COVID-19 vaccination portal site would begin hosting appointment bookings as of Friday evening.

New York City and State had received a total 28,000 doses from the federal government as of Friday and will receive another 32,785 doses this week, according to Gov. Kathy Hochul.

“My team and I are committed to working around the clock to secure as many vaccines as possible for New Yorkers,” Hochul said.

The rollout received much criticism from New Yorkers who tried and failed to schedule appointments and elected officials who questioned why the city wasn’t better prepared.

Councilmembers Jen Gutierrez, Lynn Schulman, Chi Osse, Crystal Hudson and Tiffany Caban co-signed Thursday a letter calling for an emergency oversight hearing on the monkeypox vaccine rollout.

“The City’s response to the monkeypox public health crisis has been wholly inadequate and deeply inequitable,” Gutierrez said in the statement.

“This administration dissolved our COVID defense infrastructure as cases continue to rise, and they are approaching the issue of monkeypox seemingly without incorporating any previous learnings about the importance of a robust, widely accessible vaccine platform.”